GoDaddy is one of the biggest internet service businesses in the world, and a major September update from its GoCentral website builder platform has unveiled new themes, fonts and features.
Designed to bring GoCentral back to the website builder top table (more on that in a minute), the update brings with it six clean, sleek and modern new themes, a choice of 13 new serif and sans serif fonts, the introduction of members area functionality, online appointment booking improvements and more.
All told, it’s a big update, and it’s about time. When we first reviewed the GoCentral website builder, we weren’t keen on its choice of themes, and we thought the limited number of apps and widgets was disappointing. This update should improve the GoCentral experience, but it’s still some way behind Wix and Weebly.
New GoDaddy GoCentral Themes
The six new themes available in this update are a big improvement on the other themes offered by GoCentral. They’re all much cleaner, and align more closely with the flat design principles currently en vogue in the website builder world.
The six new themes are:
Bright
Designed with beauty blogs in mind, it features a large splash image across the homepage and a floating translucent menu at the top of the page.
Organic
A stark, minimal design which utilizes white space well to draw attention to a smaller central image and an action button. Perfect for businesses which quote for work.
Dusk
A mix of the previous two, combining a large splash image from ‘Bright’ and the mid-page action button from ‘Organic’. A good fit for restaurants, or any business which offers visually engaging products.
Dawn
Unsurprisingly, ‘Dawn’ is similar to ‘Dusk’, but instead starts you off with brighter, less moody color palette.
Mint
Designed with the mobile user in mind, ‘Mint’ offers a central block with an image and action button flanked by large white borders and a small floating menu.
Highlight
The most creatively interesting of the new themes, ‘Highlight’ starts you off with a variety of fonts and overlapping elements, this means that it doesn’t follow the flat design principles that underpin most modern websites and is probably the least suited to mobile users.
Overall, these new themes are a welcome – if belated – improvement to the GoCentral platform, which prior to this update offered just eight themes. Of course, these themes only set the initial color palette, fonts and general design of your site on the GoCentral platform – you’ll still be able to make changes to suit your business or site’s goals.
New GoDaddy GoCentral Features and Plugins
Along with these fonts and themes, a raft of new features also arrived in the GoDaddy September update.
Members Only Pages
Not all website builders offer the functionality to restrict areas of your site to registered members, but now, at last, GoCentral is joining the club.
When creating a new page, simply click the Members Only toggle switch. Then, once you’ve created a members only page, you’ll see a Members section in the GoCentral Dashboard. From here, you’ll be able to add and control the members who are registered to view any restricted content. You needn’t worry about creating the log-in pages for your users, either, as GoCentral will set it up for you as soon as you create a members only page.
Pinterest Meta Tag
You’re now able to claim your website on Pinterest. Essentially, this means that if a Pinterest user pins an image from your site on the social network, your profile picture will appear next to the image.
This means that there will be a direct link between Pinterest and your website, potentially opening up new avenues to attract traffic. You’ll also get improved analytics, showing you which images from your site are being pinned on Pinterest.
Here’s how to add a Pinterest meta tag to your site:
- From your GoCentral Editor, choose Site Settings.
- Select Pinterest Meta Tag.
- Paste your meta tag code in the box. (You’ll need to get this from Pinterest; a link is provided in GoCentral.)
- Re-publish your website.
Multi-site Image Library for Uploaded Images
If you are the lucky owner of more than one GoCentral site, you’ll now find that any images you upload can be accessed on both sites from the same image library.
This means that you won’t have to upload the same image twice, saving you precious minutes.
Online Appointments
It’s not a new feature, but GoCentral has made some big improvements to its online booking forms. The function is reserved for customers on the Business Plus ($14.99/mo) and Online Store ($29.99/mo) plans. You can read more about GoCentral’s pricing plans here.
You’ll now be able to download attendee lists from GoCentral as an Excel sheet – useful if you’re running events, for example.
You can also add the ability to highlight dates with availability only before users make a booking. It’s a simple change, but one that will improve your users’ experience dramatically.
Checkout Control
If you run an online store on GoCentral, you’ll now find improvements to the checkout process. For example, you can now make it a requirement that customers enter a phone number.
These changes are all welcome additions to GoCentral, and definitely improve the product as a whole. However, we’re still not convinced that GoCentral is the best website builder on the market – it’s not bad, but it could do with some work.
If you want to build a website easily and quickly, get started with GoDaddy today.
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